40 posts tagged

STEM

When I reflect upon being a scientist, three words come to mind: fascination, frustration, and exhilaration. A scientist’s fascination comes from the wonder of trying to understand and decipher the vast complexity of the world around us. Frustration creeps in as we discover how challenging that complexity is, and how unsophisticated some of our scientific

As a sophomore at Chapman University, just embarking on my journey into the world of coding, entering a 24-hour long programming competition was the last thing I ever thought I would be doing. Nevertheless, when the opportunity came up at that first meeting of the Association of Computing Machinery to participate in IEEEXtreme 9.0 ,

Alumnus Dor Shoshan and his family have much to celebrate. Dor graduated with honors in May from Chapman University’s Biological Sciences program. He received both the Outstanding Senior Award in Biological Science as well as the Ronald M. Huntington Award for Outstanding Scholarship representing the graduating senior with the most distinguished record of academic scholarship.

Science communication is something we do a great deal of here in Schmid College. Whenever we publish a blog post, help write a press release, or give a public lecture, I am reminded of an excellent PNAS paper entitled “Bringing values and deliberation to science communication” by Thomas Dietz from Michigan State. The basic premise

I remember audibly shrieking when I received the email notifying me of my acceptance into a summer research program. At the time, I had been patiently waiting in the (rather quiet) office of the Career Development Center on the fourth floor of Argyros Forum, hoping to receive some helpful advice on a resume I would

As scientists and humans, we are all going to make errors in our work – hopefully those errors arise from honest mistakes and not bias. In experimental science, we are accustomed to performing research using the principles of the scientific method. We form a hypothesis, conduct an experiment, collect data, analyze and interpret the data,

A particularly good read (whether you are a scientist or not) is Irving Langmuir’s classic Pathological Science lecture from 1953 (download the PDF). For most physical scientists, I imagine that the talk is well known. There are extensive websites on the subject, as well as the obligatory Wikipedia page, so there is no need to

Towards the end of this past spring semester, I walked into my office to find the dreaded red “you have voice mail” light blazing on my phone. As I listened to the message, I was happy to hear the voice of President Doti, who is known to use the medium to broadcast his musings to

This year I participated as the student leader for Dr. Georgiana Bostean ’s Social Determinants of Health research lab. Over two semesters, we studied the new phenomenon of electronic cigarette use and the potential risks it poses to youth.
The research team applied our knowledge of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to studying the density

Watch Gary Taubes’ Schmid College Commencement address (beginning at the 16-minute mark). As our graduating students depart Schmid College, they depart as scientists. Regardless of their career paths, science communication is one of the vital roles they can play in society. It is because of the importance of science communication that Schmid College has chosen to invite science